Parker's Piece Public Art Commission

Written in Stone 12 02 16: Website Launch Press Release

Cambridge Rules 1848

New public art project asks football fans across the world to tell their favourite football stories

What’s your favourite football story? Where do you watch – or play – the beautiful game? These are some of the intriguing questions an exciting new public art project is asking the world to answer, creating a truly global window on how football is experienced and has developed to become the planet’s favourite sport.

Cambridge Rules 1848 this week launches a website at www.cambridgerules1848.com, on which people can leave their cherished stories of what makes the sport so special to them. Already, football fans from Buenos Aires to Preston have begun leaving images of their favourite ground, shirt – or even tattoo. The stories don’t necessarily have to be connected with the team you support – the intention is simply to gather together the world’s first archive of what football means to the masses.

The Cambridge Rules 1848 website is a key part of a new public art commission by Cambridge City Council, supported by the National Football Museum and, shortly, an international partner. It commemorates the seismic moment at which football as we know it had formalised laws. First nailed to the trees surrounding Parker’s Piece in Cambridge by a group of the city’s University students in 1848, from there, the laws of the game spread to encompass every corner of the world.

Artists Alan Ward and Neville Gabie will also mark this moment in physical form on Parker’s Piece with a large stone cut into nine, engraved with the original 1848 laws of the game in different languages. The four cornerstones stay on Parker’s Piece, the others travel to five football-loving countries across the planet in a cultural exchange.

As the project continues, there will also be the chance for fans to upload their favourite football songs or chants, memorabilia and images of their local pitches. And in 2017, the football stories, images and sounds gathered from around the world will be displayed on Parker’s Piece – celebrating Cambridge’s role in the story of football – and will also be gathered together in a book.